1986 Porsche 911 Turbo

The vexing return of the car no one could forget.

January 1986
By
RICH CEPPOS
Photos By
RICHARD GEORGE

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From the January 1986 Issue of Car and Driver

TESTED

Set your time control for 1979. Forget everything automotive you've experienced in the last six years. Let yourself drift back, back, all the way back to a time when one high-performance automobile in America stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Six years ago, things looked grim for car enthusiasts. The feds' emissions standards and a pair of fuel crises had just about squeezed the life out of hot cars—with one notable exception. Towering Colossus-like above the sea of gas-sipping econoboxes and throbbing diesels was the Porsche 930 Turbo. Its sheetmetal bulged like Arnold Schwarzenegger's chest. Its engine had turbocharged lungs. It acceler­ated as if there were a Saturn booster strapped to its tail. It became the altar at which car nuts worshiped, and no one with even a few drops of 30-weight in his veins would ever forget it.

The 930 Turbo was the promise of a better tomorrow through turbocharging. But at the end of the 1979 model year, it was withdrawn from the U.S. market. The expense and the complexity of maintain­ing its power level while bringing its air-cooled engine into line with tightening emissions regulations were cited as the pri­mary cause of its demise. Its penchant for gasoline (it delivered only 12 mpg on the EPA city test), its high price, and its low sales volume were the nails in the coffin. America would have to get by with normal­ly aspirated 911s, or none at all.

This was not easy news to take. Sure, the Turbo was beyond the reach of all but a few wealthy buyers. Its passing shouldn't have meant a thing to the rest of us, but it did. That's because the Porsche 930 Tur­bo transcended the realm of everyday cars and parts and suggested retail prices. It defined and dominated an era in automotive history.

It was inevitable that a car as coveted as the 930 would continue to find its way here through the gray market. It never went out of production, so a ready supply has been available for those with fat wallets; we test­ed a number of such cars ourselves. To thwart the gray-market traffic, Porsche went so far as to offer the 930's voluptuous bodywork and revised chassis pieces as a big-buck option on the 911 Carrera.

As of this moment, all of these substi­tutes for the real thing are hereby declared obsolete. Porsche Cars North America is once again importing the most potent member of its rear-engined family, this time under the 911 Turbo name.

The manufacturer's reasons for its change of heart are simple and straightfor­ward. Porsche has finally recognized the full importance of the North American market, where more than half of its cars are sold. As a result, we will no longer be de­nied the best stuff, which has been heretofore reserved for Europe. The game plan is for Porsche to offer all of its model lines here, while making every attempt to equal­ize power levels worldwide. Last year, we were granted the four-valve-per-cylinder 928 before the German market got it. The 944 Turbo makes the same power wherev­er it's sold. The 911 Turbo is the third step in that direction.

Importing the 911 Turbo is also the best way for Porsche to blunt the gray market and to channel the profits from U.S. sales into its own coffers. Why buy a privately federalized European-spec 911 Turbo, which might be hard to get parts for, when you can have a factory-fresh, EPA-ap­proved model with the full dealer warranty?

Corporate maneuvering aside, the best part of the deal is that a solid-gold, heart-thumping supercar has returned to our midst. It's as if Ferrari had brought back the Daytona, or Ford had resurrected the Cobra. But is all the lore surrounding the mythical 930 Turbo grounded in reality, or have our warm memories been clouded by time and distance? Is the new 911 Tur­bo still the King Kong super ride of our de­mented dreams, or has automotive science passed it by? Only a test drive will tell.

To look a the new 911 Turbo is to stare right back into 1979. Only the keenest eye will notice that the rear tires now fill out the massive flared fenders a little more fully. The engineers have attacked the 930's nasty tendency to wag its tail during hard cornering by specifying wider-than-ever, 245/45VR-16 Dunlop SP Sport D40 rear tires in place of the old car's 225/50VR-16 rubber. The bigger tires are mounted on 9.0-inch wheels, which are an inch wider than before.

Precious few cars could live through six years without so much as a face lift, but the 911 Turbo has done just that. This car has a sexier body than Madonna, and the years have dulled its charm not a whit. We sam­pled the 911 Turbo in the L.A. area, which has the highest per-capita number of winged and flared 911s in the Western Hemisphere, but our red beast wowed the masses nonetheless. They still find this a spellbinding automobile, and far more folks than you'd expect went out of their way to let us know that.

Inside, the Turbo could be any 911 of recent vintage, but for a few minor details. A small boost gauge is incorporated into the tachometer at the six-o'clock position. Check the standard plastic shift knob and you'll see that the gear pattern stops at fourth. (Turbos have never been equipped with five-speeds by the factory.)

Aside from that, the Turbo is just a well-dressed 911. Soft, sweet-smelling leather is lavished on the cockpit, including the dash top. A full load of extras, from air to sunroof, are standard just as you'd ex­pect in a car that comes in at a nice, round $48,000. But that's it. No surprises or great advances have sprung up since we last saw this model.

You won't find any major changes un­der the whale tail, either. The 911Turbo’s air-cooled flat six is basically the same one that tantalized us so much back in 1979. The turbocharged and intercooled powerplant still displaces 3.3 liters, and such de­tails as its bore, stroke, and compression ratio remain unchanged.

The bottom line—the horsepower com­ing off the end of the crankshaft—is fatter than ever, though. Porsche's data banks are six years richer with emissions-control knowledge, and it's been put to good use in the 911 Turbo. The tweaking includes a three-way catalytic converter, an oxygen sensor, and electronic assistance for the Bosch mechanical fuel-injection system. In 1979, Porsche was carping about the diffi­culties of making its air-cooled powerplant comply with federal exhaust-emissions standards. Today, the engineers have made it comply, adding an impressive 29 hp in the bargain. They also managed to improve fuel economy by 33 percent, though the 911 Turbo's 16 mpg still isn't good enough to get it past the gas-guzzler law. This scrape with the tax man adds a $500 penalty to the car's base price.

Nevertheless, if 1979 was a great year for turbocharged 911s, 1986 ought to be even better, right? Twenty-nine more horses, fatter tires, and six years of chassis development could only make things posi­tively dreamy.

There's certainly no shortage of prom­ise when you get the proceedings under way. On a cool morning, the beat of the 911 Turbo's idle will warm you faster than the heater. This engine sounds serious: lumpy and hoarse, with an occasional spit! thrown in for good measure. There's no need to hound the 911 around town. Enough torque is on hand for easing along in thick L.A. traffic with­out fishing for boost. But look out the first time you decide to scoot away from a light. First gear is as steep as the north face of the Eiger—it's good for 50 mph—and there's no heavy thrust down low. A cheerleader in a clapped-out Mustang II will have no trouble beating you across an intersection while checking her makeup. As a matter of fact, one did exactly that to us.

Then the boost comes in as the revs go past 4500 rpm, the exhaust hisses like a very angry 3000-pound cat, and whoosh! you rattle the Mustang's windows as you blow by. On the freeway, locked in a clot of 65-mph traffic, the Turbo feels dead on its feet. Rolling along in fourth gear with the engine just ticking over, it's a good five-count before the boost needle moves off of the peg. Drop down to third and it's still a three-count before the rockets fire and you can blast through a hole into the next lane.

This is no fun. Your average Volvo 740 Turbo would be ten car-lengths down the passing lane by now. In truth, second gear, which goes all the way to 86 mph, is the way to deal with the freeway—but it's kind of embarrassing, not to mention noisy, howling along at 4500 rpm just to have the horsepower on retainer.

We remember the 930 as having bags full of boost lag, but was it really this bad? Has turbo technology left this car—a Porsche—so hopelessly behind?

Our track testing indicated that some­thing was probably wrong with our test car. Its clutch was definitely slipping, and we suspect that a waste-gate problem kept the engine from building boost quickly. This car also suffered a thrown A/C drive belt and a recalcitrant driver's door during our testing, so it was not the best example of Porsche quality we've seen.

Further study was called for, so we trad­ed our flaming-red 911 Turbo for a deep-blue-metallic number (yes, you do see two different cars in the photos) and set off for the test track again. There was certainly nothing wrong this time around. Big horsepower, big rear tires, and a big rear weight bias enabled our second test car to blow out of the hole like a cannon shot. With a searing 0-to-60-mph run of 4.6 sec­onds and a clocking of 13.1 seconds at 105 mph through the quarter-mile, the 911 Turbo is most assuredly this season's ac­celeration ace—providing you're willing to resort to rough, wheel-spinning, drag-race starts.

Out on the road, though, these numbers pale next to the Turbo's boost-lag arthri­tis. Even the healthier of our two test cars took forever to spin its turbo up to liftoff speed. Once it was up and running, it was plenty strong, but it just didn't awe us the way the old 930 used to.

Then again, there's more to our memo­ries of the 930 than pure speed. It was also known as one of the trickiest handlers around. Driving one hard was a job for ex­perts. Putting the power on aggressively in a corner would pitch the nose way up, and the 930 would try to run straight over its front tires. Lift off the gas just a few millimeters in these conditions and the 930 would swing sideways so fast it would jump-start your heart.

Not so the new 911 Turbo. On the tor­tured curves of California's Ortega High­way, it shows real poise. In the last six years it's obviously been taught some manners. Antics that would have spun you out be­fore hardly faze it. The brakes are superb. It's still hard work to drive very, very fast, but it's much more forgiving now.

Comparing this experience with our last 930 outing, in 1979, it's clear that things have changed. The 930 was deadly in the curves and awesome on the straights, and the 911 Turbo is mellower in both areas.

This pass through the time barrier, the 911 Turbo's performance just hasn't blown our minds—and we think we know why. Back in 1979, there really wasn't any other car in America that offered anywhere near the 930's kind of speed. Today, how­ever, we're in the middle of a horsepower boom. We've got 157-mph 944 Turbos, 154-mph 928s, 151-mph Corvettes, 140-mph Camaros—hell, even Saab is in the 140-plus club these days.

Faced with these facts, we can draw no other conclusion than that the handwriting is on the wall for the 911 Turbo. Precious few cars can sprint with it, but the march of technology has produced a whole flock of turbo cars with much better manners. This is, no doubt, why Porsche is hard at work on a four-valve-per-cylinder version of this car, and why the awesome 959 prototype is fitted with a sophisticated twin-turbocharged setup.

But this is today—the here and now. Taking a cold, hard look at the 911 Turbo’s vexing return, we get the feeling that fond memory may have been better left undisturbed.

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